No More Good Little Christians

As long as Christians postpone the power, of or even worse, as long as Christians refuse to have an opinion of grace, pro or con our indecision will create more problems than it solves. Indecision means growing stops until we stop being indecisive. With the paralysis of analysis, the human spirit begins to sleep. Eventually, like awakening from a bad dream that we’re not quite sure was real, we wake up with the false awareness of our resistance to grace and the refusal to allow God’s love to make us who we really are. This brings a us to a sense of spiritual oppression. We become trapped in our works.

Our lives become fragmented, inconsistent, lacking in harmony and out of sync. The worm turns. The felt security of staying in a familiar place vanishes. We are caught between a rock and hard place.

How do we resolve this problem? We don’t, or even more true…we can’t! We cannot will ourselves to accept grace. There are no magic words, preset formulas, or esoteric rites of passage. Only Jesus Christ sets us free from indecision. The Scriptures offer no other basis for conversion than the personal magnetism of Jesus.

One morning, mysteriously moved by grace, a young man decides to try prayer. For five minutes he agrees to show up and shut up. And Jesus whispers, “Now is the time! The unreal world of Gucci loafers, Ipads, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and smart 3-D television, and the Super Bowl is passing away. Now is the time to stop running around frantically in four directions at once and quietly remember that only one thing is necessary. Now is the time for personal decision and creative response to My word.”

Let Me tell you a little story. One year a rich fool had a bonanza crop and made provisions for an even bigger one the following year. He said to himself, “You’re a good ol’ boy. You’ve worked hard, you deserve everything that’s coming to you, you need a nest egg for the future. Take it easy, eat heartily, drink up a storm, and have a good time.” That night my Father shattered his security: “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, who is going to enjoy it now?”

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is importantly essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

Our response to the love of Jesus demands our trust. Do we rely on our résumé or the gospel of grace? How do we cope with failure? Grace tells us that we are accepted just as we are. We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in his hands. Such is his promise to us in Jesus Christ, a promise we can trust.

It’s not at all about what we’ve done. It’s all about what He did for us.

His grace is sufficient.